Hempel philosophy of natural science

Hempel paint
Hempel's dilemma
Hempel the logical analysis of psychology

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Carl G. Hempel, 92, University Professor of Philosophy at Pitt from 1976 until his retirement in 1985, died Nov. 9, 1997, at a nursing facility near his home in Princeton Township, New Jersey. A philosopher of science who refined and defended the approach known as logical positivism or logical empiricism, Hempel was the last survivor of the "Vienna Circle" of logical positivists, many of whom emigrated from Germany and Austria to the United States around the time of World War II.

Born Jan. 8, 1905, in Oranienburg, Germany, Hempel was known as "Peter" since school days. He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the universities of Goettingen, Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin. He earned a Ph.D. in 1934 for his work on probability under Hans Reichenbach, one of the founders of logical empiricism.

After three years of private research and writing in Brussels, Hempel took a position as a research associate in philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1937. He taught philosophy at City College of New York, Queens College and Yale University before joining the

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Carl Hempel

1. Biographical Sketch

Carl G(ustav) Hempel (1905–97), known as “Peter” to his friends, was born near Berlin, Germany, on January 8, 1905. He studied philosophy, physics and mathematics at the Universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg before coming to the University of Berlin in 1925, where he studied with Hans Reichenbach. Impressed by the work of David Hilbert and Paul Bernays on the foundations of mathematics and introduced to the studies of Rudolf Carnap by Reichenbach, Hempel came to believe that the application of symbolic logic held the key to resolving a broad range of problems in philosophy, including that of separating genuine problems from merely apparent ones. Hempel’s commitment to rigorous explications of the nature of cognitive significance, of scientific explanation, and of scientific rationality would become the hallmark of his research, which exerted great influence on professional philosophers, especially during the middle decades of the 20^th Century.

In 1929, at Reichenbach’s suggestion, Hempel spent the fall

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Carl Gustav Hempel (January 8, 1905, Oranienburg, Germany - November 9, 1997, Princeton, New Jersey) was a philosopher of science and a major figure in twentieth-century logical positivism. Together with Rudolf Carnap, he was one of the leading members of the Vienna Circle. He was born and educated in Germany, but under the increasing suppression of the Nazi regime Hempel emigrated into the United States in 1937 and taught at American universities, including, among others, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is especially well-known for his defense of the Deductive-Nomological model of scientific explanation and for his work on the Raven paradox.

Hempel was a major theorist of logical positivism, but, at later stage of his career, he became critical of his earlier position, partly because of his association with Thomas Kuhn, a colleague at Princeton. Thus, Hempel contributed to both the formation and the decline of logical positivism.

Biography

Hempel—known as "Peter" since his school days—studied first at the Realgymnasium in Berlin. In 1923 he wa